


Uncorrupted

by Pappillon



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Bring my beautiful wife back to me., Gen, I can't wait any longer., Jasper's uncorruption, There's no way it will happen this way but a girl can dream., Y'all I love Jasper so much.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pappillon/pseuds/Pappillon
Summary: Steven brings Jasper back from corruption and follows her to the beach.





	Uncorrupted

Somehow, the darkness disappeared. Thick like all-consuming tar, it melted away, cut into pieces by a bright and sparkling light. The glow even dried the black that clung to every inch of her skin, first hardening it and peeling it away, section by section, like a stiff wax that created a cocoon. She broke through it, as if bursting forth from a rock wall and screamed violently upon landing into a flat patch of Earth. 

The gems stood around her, outside their base, clutching their chests and setting their hands before their mouths. That odd version of Rose Quartz stood directly in front of her, placing a comforting hand upon her shoulder, burning worse than a brand. 

“Jasper—”

She trained her golden eyes on all of them. Her body still imagined those awful green spikes that also felt like caustic fire, but where they had been before lied the normal boundaries of her former figure that Rose dared to touch. 

Jasper stood. She held her breath, and she turned and walked away, head swimming with involuntary flashbacks from the time before, when her skin held a hundred green patches, growing like horrendous moss with the potency of a disease. 

Upon her two legs she nearly stumbled, but still, Jasper managed to break into a run until she made it down the slope that lead away from the Crystal Gems’ base and tripped on her way to the shore. From her position upon the ground, Jasper looked to the ocean as it washed in and rolled out, sometimes with a violent splash of foam, beneath a pink twilight sky. With any amount of determination, she couldn’t move her legs. Every one of her muscles cried with a familiar, but somehow peaking exhaustion. 

Jasper sat upon the sand, and stopped like a statue. Her hands wouldn’t even come to her face to collect her freshly fallen tears as they leaked. Her body shook and her face contorted, but her limbs would only allow her to stay in place, tightly compressed with her knees at her chest. 

The ocean presented a pattern—one she must have seen thousands of times by now, at this precise time of day when the sky grew all its pinks and purples and pastels. The waves mirrored the beating of her own heart, and Jasper wept as though she had torn open a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding, no matter what she did. 

Her form wouldn’t move when a pair of footsteps shuffled up behind her. 

“Jasper?” 

Nor did she answer. The ex-warrior, ex-monster, and ex-subject merely stayed, tears rushing with no sign of letting up. 

Rose took a few more steps forward with her little feet until she stood next to Jasper. Neither spoke, but those striped hands finally hid their owner’s face as the weeping worsened and the waves kept crashing. The heavens darkened by a few degrees, but both parties remained in place, unmoving as a few stars poked their glittering faces unto the sunset sky. 

“Jasper?” 

“What do you want, Rose?” A quivering replaced her normal terror and intimidation. 

The other gem took a long pause, and a wave came up to touch Jasper’s feet. “I’m not Rose. I’m Steven, and I’m sorry about what happened to you. About all of it.” 

Jasper gulped and turned to her company. Droplets still rolled along her cheeks and deepened the already severe bags beneath her eyes, but none of that stopped her from staring. Her brows bent and her thick lips worked up a frown until Jasper finally glanced away. 

The sky had grown mostly purple. “You should have just shattered me. I don’t know how you brought me back from being that…thing, but you shouldn’t have bothered. I’m ruined.” 

Steven’s forehead crinkled in response, and he took a few moments to try to answer. The words ebbed and lodged themselves in his throat, making a hard and stubborn knot. 

Jasper spoke again the meantime, “You aren’t Rose Quartz, are you?” 

The water stumbled again onto the sand. 

“She’s a part of me, but no. I’m not.” 

“Rose probably would have shattered me.” 

Steven clutched the star on his shirt, but couldn’t muster an answer. Instead, he came forward and set his hand against Jasper’s shoulder. The touch arrived gently, as though he expected her to tear his arm straight from its socket upon contact, but Jasper remained still. She shook a little more, and her mass of crème-colored hair fell to mask her face, but she didn’t bother ripping Steven limb from limb; not after she had already lost. 

But Jasper did ask again, “What do you want from me?” While she kept her beautiful and newly reformed eyes sealed shut.

“I don’t know,” His voice made its syllables softly. “You can do whatever you want, Jasper.” 

She stopped to stare at Steven, and swallowed some of the sadness. 

“You might not like Earth things, but the gems and I are going to watch a movie. You can come, if you want to.” 

Jasper managed, “a movie?” 

“Yeah, it’s a story told with moving pictures. You might like it.” 

Her focus shot back to the ocean, and the sky went mostly dark save for the stars. Jasper wiped up her tears again, but they had seemed to stop, leaving her with a numb sort of exhaustion, but a kind of healing too. 

“I’m going to head back. You’re welcome to follow, if you want.” 

Steven waited a few seconds, but to the lack of a response, he finally left, running back and turning one time to look at the large woman stuck in the sand. Eventually, his footsteps took him away, and by then, the brightest light was the electricity coming from the house upon the hill. 

Jasper stayed in her place for a few minutes until her strong, capable, regular legs brought her towards the sandy path, and she began marching upward. She brushed her hair from her face and pointed her bright vision forward, having finally stood from her fall. Her eyes could see well in the dark, but still, she wandered to the light this time, and knocked upon the door.


End file.
